No Ordinary Joe

The members of the IUP basketball team are adept at making baskets. Predictions, too, it turns out. The Crimson Hawks just knew Joe Rocco belonged at the head of the class.

Rocco, a junior guard who provided valuable minutes off the bench during IUP’s run to the national title game, was honored with the NCAA Elite 88 Academic Award for Division II men’s basketball during a banquet held prior to the Elite Eight in Springfield, Mass. The award, based on cumulative grade-point average, is presented to one individual at each of the eighty-eight national championships sponsored by the NCAA.

With a 3.949 GPA through five semesters, Rocco was a shoo-in—at least in the minds of his teammates. “We were sitting there [at the banquet], and they brought out the award and said it had to do with academics,” said Rocco, a Biology major from Northern Cambria. “I didn’t even know what it was. I had no clue. And then, all the guys at the table were like, ‘Roc, that’s going to be you.’ Then I hear someone say, ‘The winner is … Joe Rocco.’ I was just completely shocked.”

Rocco has fashioned a near-perfect transcript at IUP since enrolling in 2007; the only blemish was a B he received in English. He earned straight As again in the Spring semester to boost his grade-point average even higher.

“Joe certainly is the ideal student-athlete,” said IUP coach Joe Lombardi. “He’s a young man with strong core values you’re not going to find in too many twenty-year-old college students. You talk about a gold standard—he’s it.”

Rocco has also earned rave reviews from Biology professor Amadu Ayebo, whose son Danny just happens to play for the Crimson Hawks. “Joe was in Dr. Ayebo’s class [Microbiology]—and I’m sure these were not just ordinary students; they were probably science students—and he got the only A,” Lombardi said. “Dr. Ayebo thinks Joe Rocco’s like the best student he’s ever had.”

Rocco will graduate next May and head off to medical school. After that? “The hospital environment’s really what interests me,” he said. “Whether it’s surgery or internal medicine, I definitely see myself working in a hospital environment.”

Dr. Rocco? Could that be some day? Just ask his teammates. As they proved at the Elite Eight banquet, they can foretell the future.